Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to online advertising.
Background
Certain advertisement (“ad”) networks enable ads (e.g., contextual ads, sponsored ads, display ads, etc.) to be served to users who visit the Web sites of publishers that are participating in the ad network. Advertisers generate the ads and buy placements (a.k.a. inventory) for those ads on the publishers' Web sites usually based on the anticipated audiences for those sites and/or the content of those sites. A placement represents a publisher's agreement to serve a trafficked (i.e., specified) ad to users when the users visit the publisher's site. The publisher often serves the trafficked ad contemporaneously with other content that is associated with the publisher's site. For instance, sponsored search advertising systems commonly serve sponsored ads (e.g., sponsored search results) to users who enter queries on search engine websites, often alongside algorithmic search results that are provided in response to those queries.
Ad networks typically include ad serving systems that determine which advertisements are to be provided to users. In conventional ad networks, when a publisher receives a page view or a search query from a user, the publisher sends an ad call to an ad serving system. An ad call is a request for an advertisement. The ad serving system selects an advertisement from an ad inventory based on various factors, such as the geographic and/or demographic information regarding the user. The ad serving system then sends the advertisement to the publisher, so that the publisher can serve the advertisement to the user.
Advertisers typically wish to attract users to their advertisements. To that end, advertisers are more commonly incorporating features into their advertisements that are intended to grab the attention of the users to whom the advertisements are served. For example, such advertisements may include features that move, flash on and off, change appearance, etc. Moreover, the advertisements may play sounds, challenge users to play a game, etc. However, such features may have an unintended effect of annoying the users, which may decrease the likelihood that the users will be attracted to the advertisements.